The Leave result: a fightback for political diversity

The Guardian has an interesting piece on the how the Stronger In campaign saw the referendum. Along with the campaign’s evident, amazingly hubristic assumption that the result was a done deal, there are a couple of bits that I think deserve more comment than they get in the article:

“The starting premise of the remain campaign was that elections in Britain are settled in a centre-ground defined by aversion to economic risk and swung by a core of liberal middle-class voters who are allergic to radical lurches towards political uncertainty. They could be identified, profiled and targeted by the technical wizardry of professional pollsters. Their anxieties, hopes and priorities could be plotted on charts that would then be translated into simple messages. EU membership might thus be established in the minds of this audience as a proxy for security and continuity – the natural preference of the sensible majority, as reinforced by every institution that carried cultural authority; the experts would be heeded. […] No one on the remain side fully anticipated an emotional groundswell of contempt for the very idea of political authority as dispensed from a liberal citadel in Westminster. The remain politicians found themselves besieged by an angry insurrection, channelling grievances that were well known. They stood for a cause that became emblematic of a system that was alien, arrogant and remote – and they had no answer.

Stronger In became the holding company for a liberal centrist political concept that had been transmitted in varying forms through the rise of New Labour and the ascent of Cameron. This had been the bastion of political orthodoxy for a generation, but its foundations had been corroded. […] The unique opportunity of a referendum was to give voters the option of punishing a generation of politics, regardless of party allegiance.

What jumps out at me is the way no-one really seems yet to be questioning the moral bankruptcy of this entire worldview. How did we end up in a situation where it was considered absolutely okay to run election campaigns calibrated purely towards tiny groups of centrist voters? Not only that, but to invoke a complicit media establishment to paint any views that diverge (right, left or elsewhere) from that consensus as mad, swivel-eyed and dangerous? Did no-one ever stop to wonder what the people who were excluded from the focus groups and policy calibration might think of it all?”

The whole schtick of the Westminster discussion has for years been ‘Oh we need to get more ordinary people involved in politics’, while busily disregarding the interests and political priorities of vast swathes of ordinary people. Then they made a mistake of offering two choices with distinctly different outcomes, with the result that ordinary people just got involved in politics. And the aftermath was a lot of centrists screaming ‘WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE NASTY IGNORANT VENGEFUL RACIST THICKOS????!!!!!1111’.

Much is being made among the bien-pensant of how simply ghastly Leave voters are. But I really, honestly think not nearly enough is being made of how simply ghastly the worldview is that has depicted more than half the country as at best electorally irrelevant, and at worst something ideologically to be kettled, neutralised or (ideally) eradicated.

It’s a major bugbear of mine that a lot gets said about diversity in gender, race etc but no-one has much to say about political/viewpoint diversity. This is an issue that Jonathan Haidt tackles in academia, but which is percolating relentlessly into many other arenas. In my view the referendum result was a fightback for political diversity, and it is a fight that is well overdue.

For ultimately, what kind of democracy can we have if the window of acceptable debate is policed? And it has been, for as long as I have been eligible to vote: not with batons or threat of imprisonment, but with social pressure, Facebook shaming, awkward silences if a view is expressed that diverges from the small, pale palette of acceptable ones. This silence has helped to reinforce the cultural divide that our liberal press has suddenly, belatedly woken up to: that between the ‘speak as I find’ culture of the backward, ignorant provinces and the carefully tone-policed one of the metropolis.

And this cultural divide, in turn, has helped to conceal a more serious economic one, indeed even to justify it, somewhat after the fashion of British colonialists using the backwardness of the tribes they conquered as justification for their exploitation and abuse. After all, how could it be the fault of we enlightened ones if the proles are too ignorant, malignant and morally retrograde to take advantage of our brave new world? Surely it must be our job to bring them into the light and, if they cannot be thus educated, to ensure they are placated with handouts and kept well away from the levers of power.

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Author: The Sparrow

I’m UK-based. Politically I'd call myself 'alt-centrist' maybe. I'm a mother, among other things. I’m interested in the political and cultural side-effects of globalisation, the replacement of class politics by identity politics, and the emerging backlash against the regressive left.
I was a radical lefty once upon a time, though these days I'm just interested in following arguments wherever they go. I voted Leave, in the interests of positive, engaged globalisation within a democratic framework, though I'm a bit exasperated at how it's going so far. I’m a fan of liberty, free speech, home winemaking and practical feminism.
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